Word: dissent
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...precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. A law declaring who can say what about elected officials, and how and when, did not pass muster. On the other side, Justice John Paul Stevens' 90-page dissent spoke admiringly of McCain-Feingold and shuddered to imagine the influence that big corporations and Big Labor might exercise over politics in the absence of such efforts. The ruling, he wrote, "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation...
...pressures on Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are overwhelming. They are white-knuckling their way through their final two years in office, focusing on 8% or higher growth and crushing any dissent that could derail it. The Chinese people are generally pretty happy, but the Party leadership is terrified of their outsized expectations. People under age 40, the progeny of the one-child policy, didn't live through Maoist poverty and upheaval. They are pampered, impatient and demanding. They consider exponential growth as a basic benchmark of life, and access to information to be a civil right...
...DISSENT OF THE WEEK
...dissenting, Stevens and his liberal allies displayed a competing worldview. For them, government is a force that ameliorates and repairs flaws in society - in this case, the corrosive effect of wealth on open democracy. The 90-page dissent spoke admiringly of the many years of debate and the 100,000 pages of documents underlying the McCain-Feingold reforms of 2002, and shuddered to imagine the influence that big corporations and big labor groups might exercise over politics in the absence of such congressional efforts...
...This year's reigning in of public dissent has also been linked to internal struggles between communist hardliners and reformers within the secretive Politburo, the inner circle of communist party leaders. Even though the next big political event - the national congress in which key officials will be elevated (and demoted) - isn't scheduled until 2011, analysts say the recent crackdown is part of a jockeying for power in the run up to the meeting...